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Exhibitions by Abdelkader Benchamma and Aria Dean, representing the artists’ first solo shows
in Canada, alongside Anna Boghiguian’s first major exhibition in Toronto.

Anna Boghiguian, The Chess Game, 2022. Installation view first floor, Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2022. Photo: Markus Tretter. Courtesy of the artist ©Anna Boghiguian, Kunsthaus Bregenz. 

The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery is thrilled to announce its upcoming fall season, featuring works by renowned artists from around the globe. The programming includes solo exhibitions from French artist Abdelkader Benchamma, Egyptian Canadian artist Anna Boghiguian, and American artist Aria Dean—the first shows in Toronto for all three artists, and the first in Canada for both Benchamma and Dean. The presentation of Aria Dean at The Power Plant is organized and developed in partnership with The Vega Foundation. The three exhibitions will open on October 13, 2023, and run until January 7, 2024, with free admission to the gallery.  
  
Each artist featured in this season’s programming provides a different generational perspective while engaging with intellectual discourses about time, history, and architecture in their respective work, seeking to decipher new meanings from them. Visitors can look forward to thought-provoking installations, paintings, drawings, and film that ask fundamental questions of humanity, and reflect on topics such as our interconnectedness with our world, revolutionary upheavals, and the role that industrial architecture plays in our lives.  
  
Free public programs will accompany the Fall 2023 season, including artist talks with curators, guided exhibition tours, and creative workshops for children aged 7–12 on select Sundays. Detailed information about all public programs will be announced on The Power Plant’s [Event Calendar](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/calendar).  
  
“This season’s exhibitions at The Power Plant will offer visitors entry points into what we hope will be meaningful encounters with art, inspiring reflections on the impact of time, history, and artistic creation on our humanity. Through a range of accessible free talks, workshops, and events, everyone will have the opportunity to engage with the powerful work of these three artists for the first time in Toronto.”  
— Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, The Power Plant  

**Abdelkader Benchamma**  
_**[Solastalgia: Archaeologies of Loss](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/solastalgia-archaeologies-of-loss)**_  
  
Curator: Noor Alé, Associate Curator  
  
_Solastalgia: Archaeologies of Loss_ will be Benchamma’s first major solo exhibition in Canada, and the most comprehensive to date in North America, featuring existing and newly created works, as well as an immersive, site-specific mural for The Power Plant’s Fleck Clerestory Commissioning Program.  
  
Envisioned as a geological epic of our universe, _Solastalgia: Archaeologies of Loss_ is a solo exhibition by French artist Abdelkader Benchamma that conjures enigmatic worlds and elemental forces at the precipice of transformation, evoking a yearning for worlds yet to be. Like an archaeologist, Benchamma unearths symbols across mythologies and legends inscribed by humanity onto the land, sky, and celestial bodies to create an elusive topography of dreams. 

Abdelkader Benchamma, Cosma, 2023. Exhibition view: Templon, Paris, 2023. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy the artist and Templon, Paris – Brussels – New York. 

**Anna Boghiguian**  
**_[Time of Change](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/time-of-change)_** 
  
Curators: Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs, and Noor Alé, Associate Curator  
  
_Time of Change_ maps Egyptian Canadian artist of of Armenian descent Anna Boghiguian’s interest in revolutionary upheavals spurred by political, social, and cultural ideas in the Americas, Europe, and North Africa. Following her vast travels throughout Canada and the globe, Boghiguian draws on her own lived experiences as a diasporic subject, examining the impact individuals have on history and how history impacts individuals. This exhibition presents installations and drawings—some newly commissioned for this exhibition—that reference historical characters and events that have played a role in shaping our modern world.  
  
Commissioned by Kunsthaus Bregenz, Time of Change was originally presented in Venice in the summer of 2022. A highlight of the exhibition is _The Chess Game_, 2022, an oversized chess board with cut-outs of influential historical figures from the last three centuries referencing political ideas and conflicts. For Boghiguian’s first major solo show in Canada, she will add a number of North American characters to the installation

Aria Dean, Abattoir, U.S.A.!, 2023. Single-channel video, sound, colour. 10:50 minutes. Courtesy the artist, Greene Naftali, New York. 

**Aria Dean**  
**_[Abattoir, U.S.A.!](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/abattoir-usa)_**  
**Organized and developed in partnership with The Vega Foundation**  
  
Guest Curator: Julia Paoli, Executive Director at The Vega Foundation  
  
For its second partnership with The Vega Foundation, The Power Plant will be presenting _Abattoir, U.S.A.!,_ the first Canadian solo exhibition of American artist and writer Aria Dean. The exhibition at The Power Plant is organized and developed in partnership with The Vega Foundation. _Abattoir, U.S.A.!_ surveys the interior of an empty slaughterhouse. In Dean’s animated film, the viewer follows a linear path through an impossible architecture—a seamless combination of nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century design elements and non-Euclidean spaces rather than a direct model of an existing building.  
  
Accompanied by an immersive eight-channel score by composer Evan Zierk, the film ruminates on the ways slaughterhouses and industrial architecture reveal modernism’s intimacy with death on conceptual, political, and material levels. _Abattoir, U.S.A.!_ was commissioned by the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, where it was curated by Myriam Ben Salah with Karsten Lund and Michael Harrison and presented in February 2023. The film was co-produced with [The Vega Foundation](https://thevegafoundation.com/).

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The Power Plant opens its Fall 2023 season with solo exhibitions by three international artists

The Power Plant opens its Fall 2023 season with solo exhibitions by three international artists examining time, history, and the social impact of architecture through multi-generational lenses

Passionate philanthropist and executive thought leader joins public contemporary art gallery
as the 15th President and Board Chair

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The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery—Canada’s leading public gallery devoted to contemporary art, ideas and conversations—is excited to announce the appointment of Paul Boniferro as President and Chair of the Board, effective on July 12, 2023. He is the fifteenth President and Chair of the Board to serve The Power Plant since the gallery’s inception on May 1, 1987.  
  
“We are so pleased to have Paul Boniferro as the President and Chair of the Board at The Power Plant. As an executive thought leader, and passionate advocate and supporter of the arts in Toronto, Paul will make a tremendous contribution to The Power Plant,” said Tenio Evangelista, Interim Board Chair at The Power Plant.  
  
In addition to his philanthropy and advocacy for arts and culture, Mr. Boniferro is an experienced labour and employment lawyer with governance expertise and a diverse background in political and public service. He has served on numerous boards supporting a range of charitable causes, including Casey House, Friends of Ruby, Sienna Senior Living, the AECO Innovation Lab Board of Advisors and, since
2022, Luminato Festival Toronto. Many of the artworks in Mr. Boniferro’s collection have been acquired through local non-profit and artists-run organizations, including Casey House’s annual art fundraiser Art with Heart, Artist Project, and Western Front in Vancouver.  

“With his passion and commitment to arts and culture in Toronto, our team at The Power Plant looks forward to working closely with Paul. He will be integral to guiding the processes of selecting board members and a new Director for the gallery in the months to come. We very much look forward to Paul’s contributions to The Power Plant,” said Carolyn Vesely, Interim Director at The Power Plant.  

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Paul Boniferro is an experienced labour and employment lawyer with a diverse background from different sectors, as well as political and public service experience. Most recently, Mr. Boniferro was Ontario’s Deputy Attorney General and was the Senior Crown Law Advisor to the Government on all matters. He also acted as a Senior Policy Advisor to the Ontario Minister of Labour, where he advised the government on changes to the Labour Relations Act, the Workers’ Compensation Act, the Employment Standards Act and the Pay Equity Act. He is also part of the Board of Directors at Luminato, Casey House, Friends of Ruby, Sienna Senior Living, the AECO Innovation Lab Board of Advisors, and the provincial government has appointed him as Transition Supervisory Officer to oversee the Ontario College of Teachers’ transition to a new governance structure.  
  
For all media enquiries, please contact **[media@thepowerplant.org](mailto:media@thepowerplant.org)**

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The Power Plant announces the appointment of Paul Boniferro as new President and Chair of the Board

Solo exhibitions by Ron Terada and Jen Aitken are presented alongside _in parallel_ group exhibition featuring Ella Gonzales, Micah Lexier, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Erdem Taşdelen, Sami Tsang, and Shaheer Zazai

 Ron Terada, TL; DR 4, 2019–20.  52 acrylic-on-canvas paintings, 305 x 1,585 cm. Courtesy Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.

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The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, is excited to announce its Summer 2023 exhibition season—a showcase of contemporary Canadian art. The programming includes two solo exhibitions by Canadian artists Ron Terada and Jen Aitken, alongside the second part of the group exhibition in parallel featuring six artists with strong connections to Toronto. The exhibitions run from June 23–September 4, 2023 with free admission to the gallery. 

Visitors can anticipate a multidisciplinary experience, with provocative approaches to language, form, and materials, engaging in topics such as digital and analogue media, built environments, and language-based forms of resistance. 

The exhibitions will be accompanied by a wide variety of public programs including tours, talks, and workshops. Late openings on Thursdays and Fridays until 8 PM throughout the summer months will allow visitors to make the most of the longer days by the waterfront.  

Families can engage with the exhibitions through Power Kids, free creative workshops for children aged 7–12 on select Sundays, and the new Power Kids Creative Hub located on the second floor of the gallery during regular opening hours. All programming details to be announced on The Power Plant’s [Event Calendar](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/calendar).

Erdem Taşdelen, A Moving Target, 2021–22. Computer-generated montage sequence with 100 silent UHD videos, approx. 1:40:00. Courtesy the artist.

“This summer, we are delighted to be exhibiting eight artists demonstrating the breadth and strength of the contemporary art landscape of Canada today. Encompassing both established artists and those earlier in their career, this season offers a variety of inspirations and opportunities to engage in conversations on the pressing issues of our time.” 
—Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs 

**Ron Terada**  
**_WE DID THIS TO OURSELVES_**  
  
Curator: Kitty Scott, guest curator 
  
Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada will present his first major solo exhibition in Toronto since 2018, including his monumental painting series TL; DR, 2017–22, and a newly commissioned sign sculpture in The Power Plant’s Fleck Clerestory that also lends its title to the exhibition.  
  
TL; DR is a series of paintings featuring headlines generated from The Verge, an online tech-news source, recasting the captions in the distinct font used by The New York Times. TL; DR is internet slang for “too long; didn’t read,” and Terada’s wry works speak to our shared sense of frustration when faced with the overwhelming experience of today’s often catastrophic news. The exhibition features the latest body of work in the TL; DR series: an epic cycle of 325 paintings that tells a story of 2020, the ﬁrst year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Jen Aitken, Altered Cylinder A (Reaching), 2023. Epoxy resin and fibreglass cloth. Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid 

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**Jen Aitken**  
**_The Same Thing Looks Different_**  
  
Curator: Adelina Vlas, Head of Curatorial Affairs  
Assistant Curator: Jacqueline Kok, Nancy McCain and Bill Morneau Curatorial Fellow, 2021–23 
  
Jen Aitken is a Toronto-based artist whose first major institutional presentation features both new commissions and a selection of existing concrete sculptures. Primarily working in sculpture, Aitken’s practice considers how we relate to space, form, and material as we move through our urban environment. Common building materials—concrete, wood, and fibreglass—are formed into unexpected and ambiguous configurations that engage the viewer's body and interact with the gallery's architecture. Aitken will also debut her first video installation, animating the geometric language of her sculptures into an immersive prelude to the exhibition. 
  
**_in parallel_**  
**Ella Gonzales, Micah Lexier, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Erdem Taşdelen, Sami Tsang, and Shaheer Zazai**  
  
Curators: Jacqueline Kok, Nancy McCain and Bill Morneau Curatorial Fellow, 2021–23, and Joséphine Denis, TD Curator of Education and Outreach Fellow, 2021–23 
  
in parallel is the second iteration of a two-part exhibition that platforms the work of twelve artists with strong connections to Toronto, evoking The Power Plant’s very first exhibition, Toronto: A Play of History (Jeu d’histoire), 1987. The summer exhibition showcases works by Ella Gonzales, Micah Lexier, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Erdem Taşdelen, Sami Tsang, and Shaheer Zazai, and will feature painting, textile, video, ceramics, sculpture, and an interactive scavenger hunt around The Power Plant’s building.  
  
Works by Anique Jordan and Simon Fuh from the first part of the exhibition will remain on display throughout the summer season.  

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The Power Plant’s Summer 2023 Season Showcases the Breadth and Strength of Contemporary Canadian Art

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Discover The Power Plant Archives

Anna Boghiguian: Time of Change

Time of Change

Abdelkader Benchamma. Solastalgia: Archaeologies of Loss 

Solastalgia: Archaeologies of Loss

Aria Dean: Abattoir, U.S.A.!

Abattoir, U.S.A.!

Coming Up

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The Power Plant is devoted to contemporary art, ideas and conversations. Follow our Instagram page for exclusive content, latest news and even more contemporary art!

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Canada’s leading public gallery devoted to contemporary art, ideas, and conversations.

Welcome to The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery

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Give the gift of art

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On Thursday, October 12, starting at 8 PM, join the big Opening Party and be amongst the first to see three exciting solo shows by international artists [Abdelkader Benchamma](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/solastalgia-archaeologies-of-loss), [Anna Boghiguian](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/time-of-change) and [Aria Dean](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/abattoir-usa).  
  
Each exhibition provides a different generational perspective while engaging with intellectual discourses about time, history, and architecture in their respective work, seeking to decipher new meanings. Join the opening to explore the thought-provoking installations, paintings, drawings, and a film that all ask fundamental questions of humanity and reflect on topics such as our interconnectedness with our world, revolutionary upheavals, and the role of industrial architecture in our lives.

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Opening Party of Fall 2023 Exhibitions

Anna Boghiguian working on a commissioned cutout figure for The Chess Game (2022) series, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto, 2023. Photo by Noor Alé.

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Tune into an exciting conversation between legendary Egyptian-Canadian artist of Armenian origins, Anna Boghiguian and the curator of _[Time of Change](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/time-of-change)_ exhibition at The Power Plant, Adelina Vlas, who will discuss the creative nuances of Boghiguian’s vast catalogue of work.  
  
Anna Boghiguian was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1946 and has Armenian roots. She studied political and social science at the American University of Cairo and holds a BFA in fine arts and music from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Since the early 1970s, her art has emerged from various movements around the globe, translating a nomadic experience and gaze into painting and installation, collages and books. As a travelling artist, she tells of how people and ideas, relationships and goods vary and evolve, sometimes bright and fluid, sometimes bound in inequality and oppression.  

Artist Talk

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Artist Talk with Anna Boghiguian and Adelina Vlas

Abdelkader Benchamma working on a special commission at The Power Plant Contempoary Art Gallery, Toronto, 2023. Photo by Hyerim Han. 

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On Saturday, a French artist Abdelkader Benchamma will get together with the curator of _[Solastalgia: Archaeologies Of Loss](https://www.thepowerplant.org/whats-on/exhibitions/solastalgia-archaeologies-of-loss)_ exhibition, Noor Alé, to talk about their collaborative work on this show and the complex motifs prevalent in Benchamma’s artistic practice.  
  
Born in 1975 in Mazamet (France), Abdelkader Benchamma lives and works in Paris and Montpellier. Benchamma chooses to work in a sole medium: drawings. He adopts different approaches to the drawing process, sometimes moving across a sheet of paper with the meticulous strokes of an engraver, sometimes spreading over a wall with lavish gestures that appropriate the space. The matter escapes from the frame in a form of organic growth. Inspired by literature, philosophy, astrophysics and esoteric reflections, his works create visual scenarios that question our relationship to reality as they probe the frontiers of the invisible. 


In Conversation

Current exhibiting artists engage in a series of conversations with key curators and discuss art, history, past, present, and future, including transformations to artists’ practices and to institutional and curatorial models.


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In Conversation with Abdelkader Benchamma and Noor Alé

Sandra Brewster, Roots, 2021-2022, installation view. Image by Ibrahim Abusitta

Evergreen Sandra Brewster, Roots, 2021-2022, installation view. Image Ibrahim Abusitta.jpg

Join The Power Plant for an intimate tour of the historical [Evergreen Brickworks](https://www.evergreen.ca/evergreen-brick-works/) and its public art collection. Curator Charlene Lau will guide us through this unique space and highlight what has made it a Toronto institution. 

Sign up for your **[Power Patron](https://www.thepowerplant.org/join-and-support/power-patrons)** or **[Circle of Contemporaries](https://www.thepowerplant.org/join-and-support/circle-of-contemporaries)** membership today to make sure you get an invitation!

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